


To Towered Camelot

by Tozette



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Gen, Podfic Available, blanket permission for podfic or translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 12:12:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3326849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Tozette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Pansy and Hermione get sent back in time, it’s definitely Pansy’s fault. If she hadn’t been mucking about in potions class — Hermione tells her this, at length, immediately after their feet return to solid ground.</p><p>"What does it matter?" Pansy hisses, looking at their surroundings in dismay. </p><p>Barley stalks spread for as far as the eye could see, beautiful in their golden stretch toward a clear blue sky, but…</p><p>"Where <i>are</i> we?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Towered Camelot

**Author's Note:**

> From a series of tumblr AU prompts. It is worth noting that if I ever continued this it would have a 98% of being Hermione/Pansy femslash.
> 
> [Now with a fantastic podfic by sylvaine](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6283993) (omg i love their voice so much)

 

When Pansy and Hermione get sent back in time, it’s  _definitely_ Pansy’s fault. If she hadn’t been mucking about in potions class — Hermione tells her this, at length, immediately after their feet return to solid ground.

"What does it matter?" Pansy hisses, looking at their surroundings in dismay. 

Barley stalks spread for as far as the eye could see, beautiful in their golden stretch toward a clear blue sky, but…

"Where  _are_  we?”

* * *

Where they are is significantly less of an issue than  _when_  they are, as the pair discovers. 

They stumble, eventually, upon a tower. The resident is a lady with dark eyes and careless hair, and her face is lovely. She sits at a loom with her fingers flicking deftly, weaving even as she speaks to them. 

Before her there is a mirror, which seems vain but Pansy is fairly sure the women can’t see her own face from her seat. It seems aimed at the window, she thinks. 

"Sorry," says Hermione, not sounding very sorry at all, "could you tell us what date it is? We got a bit lost."

The lady tells them, but she never ceases weaving. Her eyes flick from them to her loom to her mirror, over and over, and Pansy feels tired just watching her. 

When she tells them the month, it is January, which is strange because it was April yesterday. When she tells them the year, concerns about the month go right out the window. 

Surprisingly, neither goes to pieces. “Twelfth century,” murmurs Hermione quietly, obviously wracking her brain for information. “Surely that’s impossible,” she mutters after a second. “That’s - when I had a time-turner last year I could barely go back a day. This is closer to a millennium!”

 _Hold on_ , thinks Pansy,  _you had a time-turner._ And then she thinks of how Hermione Granger was everywhere, all the time, in their third year. Of course she had a time-turner. 

Pansy looks out the window. “Is that a castle?” she asks carefully. She doesn’t think it’s Hogwarts, but maybe they’ll get lucky — who knows what it looked like in the twelfth century?

"Camelot," murmurs the lady, weaving steadily. 

It is possible, Pansy reflects, that the ‘where’ may be just as important as the ‘when’.

"Oh," she says. 

She sees Hermione open her mouth in confusion, and beats her to it before she can say something terribly unsubtle.

"Well. All right then," Pansy drops a curtsy, elbowing Hermione into shakily following suit. "Thank you."

(The lady watches them leave. She sees them in her mirror, walking together by the river with their heads bent toward one another. Something in her aches for companionship. 

"I’m half sick of shadows," she murmurs wistfully, and returns to her weaving.)

* * *

"I thought Camelot was made up?" Hermione hisses when they’ve gained some distance. They walk down toward the river where it runs sluggishly but doggedly, and the noise covers much of their conversation - just in case anybody did happen to be listening in. 

"No, it was a Wizarding city, it’s —"

"Then how come it’s not in any of our textbooks? I should think History of Magic, at least —"

"Because we  _lost_  it,” Pansy snaps.

"We  _what_?”

"We lost it! Like Atlantis."

"Like  _Atlantis?_ How do you  _lose_  an entire city?” Hermione asks, jerking her chin toward where Camelot rises in the distance. Its towers are tall and beautiful, and long pennants snap in a stiff breeze.  

Pansy shrugs. “Sometimes the spells they used to use to stop muggles seeing them, er, went a bit wonky.”

"Wonky." Hermione looks angry for a second, and then puzzled. Pansy leaves her to it for a while, but eventually she has to draw her attention back to the problem they’re actually having. 

"Granger," she says, nudging her with her elbow, "as fascinating as I’m sure the history of lost cities is, we’re in the twelfth century."

Hermione frowns. “I’ve studied the principles of time travel,” she admits. “I’d like to see if there’s a library with good reference texts on the matter in the city, but —” Here she stops abruptly. 

"But?"

Hermione shakes her head. “I’d say we’re stuck here,” she admits.

Pansy can feel her face contort a little - ugly, she thinks, she’s always the ugly one, and she has the hateful expressions to match. “We can’t be,” she says in a hard voice.  _I can’t be stuck here with you_ , she thinks, horrified, but she’s not stupid enough to say it. 

The only way they’re getting out is together. It’s not productive to fight right now.

"I’m not happy about it either," Hermione says, giving her a sideways look like she knows what Pansy’s thinking. 

* * *

They talk it out that evening, in the red-golden glow of the setting sun upon the barley by the river, and for all that Pansy doesn’t like her - doesn’t like what she stands for, doesn’t like her ignorance and her vile, conceited cleverness - Hermione is easy to talk to. 

She’s clever and sharp and she understands what Pansy means when she speaks.

"I agree we should try to return, of course," Hermione nods, "but I think first we need to make sure we have somewhere to sleep, surely?" Her eyes flick to Camelot. 

Practical, Pansy thinks. “Yes,” she agrees aloud. Internally, she knows this means tricking or convincing somebody to help them. She breathes deeply.

* * *

They’re half way to the city by the time they hear hoof beats. Pansy can’t help but clench her fingers around her wand, hidden inside the fold of her cloak. 

She probably needn’t have bothered, she thinks, when she sees him.

"Oh," breathes Hermione, and for a change Pansy agrees with her. 

On the path down by the river, riding at a leisurely pace, a solitary knight in burnished steel comes. The light of the sunset flames red on his shining armour. The horse he rides is huge, with hooves that kick up dust at any pace.

He cuts a figure, Pansy thinks, but she can’t help but raise one eyebrow, contemplating that the broad shoulders and tumbling, coal-black hair certainly help. Unexpectedly, he slows as he passes them.

"What’s this?" says the man, peering at them with an expression of open concern, "two ladies of quality, unchaperoned in the wilderness? Night will fall soon, you know. You must be lost?"

"Erm," says Hermione, and Pansy sees her mouth ‘ladies of quality’ silently to herself.  _For Merlin’s sake, Granger,_ thinks Pansy.  _It’s the twelfth bloody century, you’re going to have to deal with it._

Pansy, however, is clearly going to have to be the social skills of this arrangement. God knows Granger doesn’t have any worth mentioning. 

"Evening, Sir Knight," she says politely. "We  _had_  a chaperon,” she tells him, “but I’m afraid we’ve been separated for a few days now. We’re a bit lost,” she admits, tugging on a lock of her hair and hoping she looks young and afraid as she peers up at him. It shouldn’t be hard, since she  _is_  young and afraid. 

"Days?" he repeats, looking horrified. 

This one, Pansy decides, would probably be a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff. All virtue, very little cunning. 

She bites her lower lip and gazes up at him through her eyelashes.

* * *

Hermione hasn’t ridden before, Pansy thinks, because she clutches Pansy’s waist with shaky arms. Pansy does not much  _like_ how the little mudblood clings to her, but she refrains from comment. Counterproductive. Eyes, she thinks, on the goal.

 Proper introductions are hard to come by, of course, since none of them have acquaintances who might introduce them. But they muddle through, despite the impropriety of it all - and it isn’t  _that_  improper, not really; those rules aren’t set in stone until the Victorians, which won’t be for another six hundred years at least. 

Pansy recognises his name, though, and she knows from her sudden stiffness that Hermione does too.

"This is going to end in trouble," Hermione says anxiously. 

 _I know_ , thinks Pansy, but she shrugs and tries to feign confidence. 

This is how Pansy and Hermione arrive in Camelot mounted atop the towering steed of bold Sir Lancelot.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] To Towered Camelot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6283993) by [thriceandonce (sylvaine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylvaine/pseuds/thriceandonce)




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